Tag: Retail Investing

The Holiday Season is now upon us, and in just a matter of days, millions of dollars will be spent buying presents. On Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday we will see millions of shoppers spending billions of dollars on gifts for the holidays.

But since we have a 'holiday' shopping season every year the more important thing from an investors perspective is whether holiday sales will be higher or lower than last year. Luckily this year the National Retail Federation expects annual holiday spending will increase by 3.6% to 4% this holiday season over last year.

Soon after the weekend, sales figures will start rolling in, and investors will either start selling or buying shares of the companies winning the retail holiday war. This makes it hard for investors to accurately predict ahead of time which companies will be the winners and which will be the losers, and therefore Exchange Traded Funds are the best way to make this investment.

With ETF's you can easily purchase a small or large basket of retail stocks right before the holiday shopping season, benefit from the winners while not getting crushed by the losers, and then get out of investing in retail before the end of the year.

A Wells Fargo analyst recently said retail has bottomed and now may be time to start buying into the sector. With a weak holiday shopping season, followed by poor retail numbers in January and February retail stocks have hit hard times.

Compound that with the need for clarity on a possible border tax and other political issues hanging in the background, uncertainty in the industry is high. But while high uncertainty leads to lower stock prices, it also brings opportunity for smart investors.

Currently we are seeing specialty retailers outperforming the big box retailers like Macy's, Kohl's, Sear's, and JCPenny's. The downsizing of the big box retailers is also a good thing for the smaller players since it gives shoppers fewer options to choose from. But as a whole, this downsizing is hurting the group's overall performance as share prices of the big names companies have been beaten up. Continue reading "Now May Be the Time to Buy Retail ETF's"→